Halo Needs a Big Win to Return to Glory, And Its Past Reveals a Clear Way to Achieve This

Once upon a time, Halo was the reason to buy an Xbox. Master Chief is one of the most iconic characters in gaming. But that reputation has faltered over the decades. Halo: Campaign Evolved brought the original adventure back with modern technology, new missions, four-player online co-op, and the series’ long-awaited arrival on PlayStation. Yet the response has hardly represented the triumphant new beginning Xbox needed. And now the series is officially being handed to Activision, with fans predicting we will receive Call of Halo with the next game. Jokes aside, this is not the path Halo needs to take.

If Activision is willing to look backwards, there is a clear way to revive the franchise back to its old glory. Some of the best moments in the series don’t even involve Master Chief. I remember the doomed atmosphere of Halo: Reach and slowly exploring New Mombasa in Halo 3: ODST, experiences that proved the series was bigger than one Spartan. Neither needed Chief as its protagonist. After years of repeatedly finding reasons to put John-117 back in the armor, Halo needs to remember that lesson. Instead of bringing Master Chief back out, the series needs to let the legend rest and tell a different story.

Halo Has Spent Too Long Depending on Master Chief

While the series cannot be considered a failure after 343 Industries and Halo Studios took over, it is obvious it took a turn for the worse. While fans were riding high on Halo 3: ODST and Halo Reach, the follow-ups from the new developers just didn’t match up. Halo 4 had impossible expectations and failed to live up to them, and Halo 5: Guardians had an even worse reception from fans. Halo Infinite was a step in the right direction, but once again, it stumbled.

One recurring problem is the franchise’s inability to truly move beyond Master Chief. His return in Halo 4 made sense, and his relationship with Cortana produced some of that game’s strongest material. After that, however, Chief remained the gravitational center around which almost everything important had to orbit. Even Halo 5, which gave Jameson Locke a major role, ultimately revolved around finding Chief. Halo Infinite then returned the focus to humanity’s greatest Spartan.

Halo: Campaign Evolved illustrates the problem perfectly. Halo Studios did not merely remake Chief’s first adventure. Its three-mission Operation: METEORITE expansion goes backward in the timeline and once again puts Master Chief at the center, this time alongside Sergeant Johnson. I love Chief, but I want some adventures featuring the heroes that fought the Covenant beside him or parallel to him. Sometimes making a fictional universe feel bigger requires allowing its biggest character to take a step back.

Halo: Reach and Halo 3: ODST Already Showed the Better Path

That is why Halo: Reach remains such an important game, and easily my favorite in the series. Bungie’s final Halo game focused on Noble Team and the fall of Reach rather than giving Master Chief another chance to show why he’s the series’ mascot. What makes Reach even more interesting is that players largely knew the final outcome, but that just makes the journey even more compelling. What mattered was experiencing that catastrophe through characters who had their own battle to fight.

Halo 3: ODST went even further. Instead of another superhuman Spartan power fantasy, players became an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper separated from his squad in New Mombasa. The game takes place around the events leading toward Halo 3, presenting the Human-Covenant War from a different perspective. Its ruined city, investigative structure, and less-than-superhuman protagonist gave the game a completely different atmosphere. This would never be possible if it were Master Chief leading a squad of ODSTs.

This is what Activision needs to study if it wants to create a great Halo game. It needs a perspective that makes familiar pieces interesting again. That means leaving Master Chief behind. Reach centered on an entire Spartan team facing a battle history had already decided. ODST followed ordinary soldiers surviving between the gigantic events of the main trilogy. Their stories expanded Halo rather than stretching Master Chief’s story further.

The Halo Novels Are Filled With Potential Games

The best part is that Activision would hardly need to search for ideas. Halo has decades of expanded-universe material. The Flood as the events of Halo: Combat Evolved told with additional UNSC, Covenant, and other perspectives. Ghosts of Onyx explores Kurt-051 and the SPARTAN-III program, while the Forerunner Saga travels roughly 100,000 years into the setting’s past. Then there is Contact Harvest. Joseph Staten’s novel takes place around humanity’s first encounter with the Covenant, with Harvest initially presented as a peaceful agricultural colony before everything changes.

Any of these or the other novels would be excellent material for a loose adaptation. A galactic celebrity Spartan is required. Give players Marines, civilians, ODSTs, or another group trapped in the opening nightmare of a war whose scale they cannot yet comprehend. Activision could also create something entirely original during the Human-Covenant War without interfering with the trilogy.

That is where I want the next Halo game to go. Not another resurrection, another emergency requiring Chief, or another attempt to explain why the galaxy’s most famous Spartan is once again its only hope. Give me a doomed squad, an ONI operation gone wrong, first contact with the Covenant, or Marines fighting somewhere while Chief is saving humanity hundreds of light-years away. The future of Halo, the next Halo game, the Activision Halo game, and the Halo franchise can still include Master Chief. But the series needs to prove it can live without him. Reach and ODST already proved that it can.

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